John Munson/The Star-LedgerDefendant Lee Anthony Evans, left, and his legal advisor, Olubukola Adetula, meet at sidebar earlier this week during jury selection in the 33-year-old murder case against Evans in Newark.

NEWARK — This case is solved, Lee Anthony Evans thundered as he addressed a jury Friday on the first day of his murder trial in a packed Newark courtroom.

"That’s what they said. The mayor and politicians, they have their own conclusions." But, Evans, added, "I was raised in a different era by a mother, who, in that era it was if you’re innocent, you don’t have to go nowhere."

"I’m innocent. It’s not that I have to prove this case; they know I’m innocent, and it will come out."

Charged with the 33-year-old killing of five Newark teenage boys and representing himself, Evans finally got the chance to tell his side of the story, choking back tears at one point, seemingly overcome by the weight of the moment.

Since his arrest 19 months ago, Evans has railed against the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, calling both corrupt and saying they conspired against him. His arrest, Evans charged, was timed to coincide with Booker’s re-election campaign.

The murder charges were brought on the strength of a statement to police by his cousin, Philander Hampton, who Evans said received "a get-out-of-jail-free card." Hampton called Evans the mastermind behind the Aug. 20, 1978 killings of the five boys. Hampton has since pleaded guilty to felony murder, and received a lighter sentence in exchange for his planned testimony against Evans.

Authorities allege Evans and Hampton lured the boys into an abandoned Newark house that night then locked them in a closet. Evans then allegedly poured a can of gasoline through the house and lit a match. The bodies of Michael McDowell, Randy Johnson and Alvin Turner, all 16, and Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, both 17, were never found and the disappearance was long considered a missing persons case.

During his 10-minute opening statement, Evans, 58, called the state’s case "a lie," likening it to a Hollywood script in which the prosecuting attorney is the lead "actor." His voice booming, the 6-foot-4, 260-pound Evans appeared to alarm the three Essex Couny sheriff’s officers in the back of the room, who quietly moved forward.

Evans is a mason by trade and has no legal experience but said he decided to go pro se — though he still has a court-ordered legal adviser — because no one else understands or cares enough about the case.

"I’m hoping and praying you keep an open mind," he told the jury.

Noah K. Murray /The Star LedgerLee Anthony Evans, accused of masterminding the killing of five teens in 1978, provided an emotional opening statement at his murder trial in Newark today.

In his own 40-minute opening statement, Assistant Prosecutor Peter Guarino methodically laid out the case to jurors, alleging Evans killed the boys as payback for them having stolen between 1 and 7 pounds of marijuana from him the day before. Evans hid the crime well, Guarino said, but it was not perfect.

"These five boys, friends in the city of Newark, disappeared," he said. "They vanished without a trace. They disappeared without leaving a trail. But the evidence will show that every trail these boys left of their last days on earth leads back to one man." Guarino walked to the defendant’s table, then paused before lifting his right hand and pointing to Evans.

Guarino told jurors that when Ernest Taylor broke into Evans’ house to steal a small amount of marijuana — as he and the other teens had done before without Evans’ knowledge — he broke the bathroom window. It prompted a fateful decision, Guarino said. Taylor and the others, he added, "weren’t going to just take a few joints of marijuana. The window was broken. Now they’re in it for all or nothing." They ended up taking an amount of marijuana that Evans quickly noticed and for which he exacted merciless revenge, Guarino said.

The opening in Superior Court provided a dramatic start to what had already been a highly-anticipated murder trial, in a case for which there is no DNA evidence or fingerprints to link Evans to the crime.

The state’s first witness, an elderly and frail Floria Turner McDowell, recalled the desperate hours after learning her son, Alvin Turner, had gone missing. "I called Evans up," Turner McDowell said. "A lady told me she saw my son on the back of a truck that night," she remembers telling Evans.

Evans, whom everyone called "Big Man," often enlisted local teens in odd jobs, driving them around in his green pickup truck. "Evans said he didn’t give a damn what nobody told me," Turner McDowell said.

Stumbling his way through the basics of cross-examining a witness, Evans spent several minutes with Turner McDowell, posing a series of convoluted questions that Superior Court Judge Patricia Costello distilled down then asked again. Evans did appear to score a point when Turner McDowell acknowledged that earlier on the day of Aug. 20, 1978, a man knocked on her door armed with "a big gun," she said. That man was not Lee Evans.

The trial will continue Monday when more victims’ relatives are expected to testify.

Outside the courtroom, Evans was asked how he thought the first day had gone.